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Engineers Plan To Go Local For Mars Habitat Building Materials

After 50 years of robotic exploration, scientists and engineers have amassed a wealth of data on what it would take to send humans to Mars and keep them alive there. Exploration planners at NASA and elsewhere talk of “pioneering” Mars, with a series of visits to build up an infrastructure for an ongoing presence.
Now, with the growing realization that the planet contains abundant water and other resources, planners are considering how robots can use them to prepare a safe ...

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Actually, the first town on Mars should be called Vinland, after the pre-Columbus Viking settlement in America that is lost in history -- doomed from the start because of inadequate technology and total lack of supporting infrastructure.

That was my point. People only seem to remember the success stories, but there are plenty of cautionary tales as well. I'd just like to see a little realism injected into the Mars discussion. The trip alone has two SHOWSTOPPERS for which viable countermeasures have not been demonstrated: extended periods of microgravity and high radiation. Until these are dealt with (not in theory but in hardware) there's no point in even talking about going to Mars. Why does everyone but us seem to understand this?

ABSOLUTELY. The moon is a few days away, Mars is months away. Telerobots on the Moon could build a complete habitat which worked well before we sent anyone there. Ditto Mars, but sending anyone there is a death sentence. No way they're coming back.

Actually, the moon has massive water resources at its two poles. A nice pair of polar colonies with adequate surface transport between them would be the ideal stepping off place for further solar system exploration. And what's the big deal with Mars anyway. Saturn's Titan is a much better colonizing possibility, with a heavy nitrogen atmosphere and even more massive water resources than either the moon or Mars. Just warm and serve. What could be easier.

What a pretty picture of possibilities. I would think that putting a research outpost on the surface of Mars to study whether humans can adapt to Mars gravity would be top of the list. To do this we would need to send the most compact and complete medical research facility that can be devised. We are going to need a small hospital there anyway no matter what the results of the study turn up.

If humans cannot adapt to Mars gravity we might be able to hollow out one of the moons to create a spinning space colony with enough artificial gravity to adapt too.

I am not even sure the human race will survive to 2050! I probably won't! SpaxeX and NASA are planning to land a Dragon on Mars in 2018, and if we pushed things we could probably put boots on Mars before the end of the decade. Just because the Russians can't keep up doesn't mean we have to slow down! I would say by 2025 at the latest.

"Just because the Russians can't keep up" LOL
Who is hitch hiking to the ISS?
Who is powering up most of your rockets?
Who has the best expertise?
The only Soviet/Russian space battle lost was the moon project!
And sure they will be ready for the race!

How many rovers does Russia have on Mars?
How many spacecraft has Russia sent beyond our solar system?
How many Russian spacecraft are orbiting other planets?
How many asteroids or comets have the Russians visited?
How many observatories does Russia have?
Where is the Russian Hubble or Kepler spacecraft?
How many planets have the Russians found orbiting other stars.
Who can see farther into the universe than mankind has ever seen?
Where is the Russian James Web space telescope being built?
What Russian company lands there first stages back on Earth.
I can understand your wanting to do more, but your
continual disrespect of NASA is a disgrace to the Russian people.

NASA is a FAT, administration outsourcing their liftoff to Russia!
How many people safely returned home with Russian technology?
Apart of the lunar success mission from the US, the "firsts" were Soviets!!
First satellite!
first pet!
first man!
first woman!
first permanent space station!
I'll respect back NASA when NasA will shrink its last a and do more Space! I've been to the Cape to attend one STS launch so give me a break. That turned me on at least!
Space exploration are interesting but it's only an engineers stuff, not a man stuff!

yadda yadda yadda! If Russia wasn't attacking other country's then their space program would be growing instead of falling apart with antique technology. The Russian space program is their greatest asset in human relations, and their cosmonauts are true ambassadors. You obviously are the other side of the coin.

"The Russian space program is their greatest asset in human relations, and their cosmonauts are true ambassadors" this is the part where you are right I concur to that.
BUT "If Russia wasn't attacking other country's then their space program would be growing instead of falling apart with antique technology." I strongly disagree. Who attacked Iraq, Libya, Syria, and so on and so on, and mounting coup in Ukraine and supplying weapons to terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. Occupying foreign territories like in Cuba and colonizing western Europe with your bases!
So VOTE TRUMP to make USA great again!

Russia does it with outdated technology. The Soyuz is decades old. The cosmonauts on the space station are basically glorified maintenance techs. Very little science is done in the Russian space station module. While the U.S. is temporarily relying on the Russians for a lift, it is not as if the U.S. does not have the technology to build man rated spacecraft. The coming U.S. manned spacecraft will be able to carry more passengers, and go past low earth orbit - something the lowly Soyuz cannot do.

How many Russian probes successfully landed on Mars? How many Russian probes orbited Jupiter, Saturn? How many Russians probes do good science in orbit around the Sun?
Which country has nearly all the data needed to pick candidate human settlements on Mars?

Russians have done good work, but hardly have they been world leaders.

Ah, the 35 year plan. It's kind of like congress's. So far away that no actual work or investment is needed, but it make for great "Forward Looking' propaganda for elections, speeches and press releases, but nothing needs to be done now. NASA has too many 10 year plans and 2-4+6 year election cycles, open bribery of committees who do funding and God help an administrator when something goes wrong. Go Elon, Go!

The problem with some of these reports that state resources on Mars are so-called "abundant". Like on Earth minerals have to be in recoverable concentrations. Titanium and aluminum are some of the most abundant minerals on Earth but are only recoverable in certain areas, and are never found free in nature. There are an extensive processes to make useable Ti and Al, both with high power requirements, and subsequent further use.

One simply won't be able to pour a bucket of Mars soil into a 3-D printer and make a rover, habitation structure, etc.

Also, somehow someone has to figure out how to get an pressurized excavator to Mars to dig and install the subsurface habitation modules that will be needed.

The same needs will be required on the Moon so go there first to test, build and refine what will be needed on Mars.

The moon is a waste of time and money, and Mars is the first step to the rest of the solar system. LM's Fusion reactor could power a VASIMER propelled spacecraft to Jupiter and beyond. Constant thrust could provide artificial gravity to counter weightless induced disability ,and it could all happen in a decade with a little wishful thinking. When you consider that UCSB might be building an interstellar spacecraft through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, and the possibility of secret programs to build EM drives then baby steps on the moon is a been there done that scenario. Where is Ponce De Leon when I need him?

You've read too much sci-fi. What you say is the wishful thinking. I read SF too, but I also write sci-fi and I'm a former NASA and Boeing engineer. I know what's possible & how to get there. You don't.

Spot on Talyn. As the Viking landers showed there is some complex chemistry on Mars. Using local resources won't be as 'simple' as putting a bucket of selected, high grade, well characterized ore into a '3 D printer' and producing usable product (and as far as I am aware even that hasn't been achieved yet!). The first attempts to use local resources on Mars will fail more often than they succeed - not something you want to try out when lives depend on them.

No requirement for a pressurised excavator. Construction can be carried out robotically. Agree on Moon-first approach. Initial prototypes of machinery and techniques should be built and tested there, as the immensely shorter flight times would enable more rapid progress.

Dear tayln and cosmic observer,
Thank you for your comments. Could not agree more,with the exception of going to the moon first as a proving ground. But tayln your tendancy toward caution is a quality that deep space exploration cannot do without. Me, I'm game for anything. Why. At this point I just want to be buried there! Go Space X!!!!

SpaceX is nothing doing NasA's job, it is truly a shame, to end into a ditch's administration nightmare dead end!
Get rid of half of the useless employees, and integrate SpaceX into NASA! It's a twice tax payer's rip of because they paid for the research of technology and they paying again for the use af that tech. Tax payers are damn idiots to accept those kind of things and now what is the purpose of NASA.

Ditto on AA. I realize I am being optimistic about some things, but as long as I'm breathing why not. LM's fusion reactor reads like its already proven and they are just trying to work at higher temperatures to be more efficient. We really don't need fusion because fission will work fine using a Discovery One spacecraft designed for long duration powered flight. Submarines work fine at much closer quarters. It really depends on VASIMER working to get the ball rolling for a fast track expedition.

I see neither technology nor finance as a daunting problem, but consensus is an overwhelming issue. By and large, the world does not understand frontier formation in space as a value, and so I do not believe they, or their governments, are willing to pay for making a start. Most think there is plenty of time. Individual visionaries (Musk, Bezos, Bigelow, Branson, et. al) might want to get together to tell a story about why humans must move on and how it will be fun, fun being the key concept. If visitors could experience an immersive, interactive space colony environment complete with shopping and food, I think they would pay, so the project would be self-funding. Think Renaissance faire about the future, and drop in at The League of the Brick Moon on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Has anyone here heard of the Case for Mars by Dr. Robert Zubrin?
Extensive discussion of IRSU for propellants, oxidizer, water, oxygen and materials for base construction. Heck, IRSU originated in mass media by Zubin. Checkout Mars Society for more info.

Can't wait to see Martian pottery made of local clay! Maybe with a nice graphical décor as the Vikings did? Mark Watney would be delighted.
But please don't waste your time trying to do it all with nuclear power. There's nothing to be said against installing a nice local field of high-efficiency solar cells; you want to concentrate the basic research effort on what's really specific to Mars. Always remember you don't need to dig the trench in a day if the astronauts aren't coming for another ten years.

Normally, when faced with shortsighted comments such as this, one answers with how the space budget is so small that it wouldn't contribute much to the solution of Earth's problems.

This time I'm going to take another tack and ask "why".

Why should we solve all the problems in one place before we go to another?

Why must one place be perfect before we can dream or plan or explore?

Why do you think it's even possible to "solve" Earth's problems when we don't all even agree upon what those problems are?

Do you actually have a list of the "problems" that must be solved before we can explore and do you have an idea of what those "solutions" might look like?

Perfection in one place is _not_ a prerequisite to exploration and, in fact, imperfection may actually be a huge motivator in driving people to explore, whether it is to find answers for problems back home, or merely to leave the imperfection behind.

I can almost guarantee that your solutions to what you see as problems won't match my solutions and we may even disagree on whether those things are really problems at all.

The vacuous simplicity and vagueness of the very statement "Fix our problems here on Earth" pretty much guarantees that the "problems" you want solved have no real solutions.

That is exactly the reason there are no plans by the US, Russia or China to go to Mars. Making it "International" makes it grossly expensive and highly political.
Musk has the only proven approach to risky explorations. Keep it lean, keep it simple and keep management to just a few.

Expense is inevitable because of the multiple new technologies that are needed. Beyond the capacity of any 1 company, meaning Boeing, LockMart, and Airbus, let alone the much smaller SpaceX. An international effort will spread work around whether it should be spread or not, but there's an immense amount of work to do.

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